Good luck to Mike and all the rest of the South Florida Bulls. Definitely sounds like a better prelim than Univ of Wisconsin/Platteville got last year lol. They played penn state, Ohio and someone else.

Chris Raehl threw the rulebook at the club and basically threatened suspensions, bans and fines if ANYONE on the club played, and did not meet 100% of ALL the rules in the comprehensive rulebook. He basically bullied the club into dropping out of the tournament, and scared the players shitless from playing it again.

Everyone in college has different challenges and issues that they are trying to resolve. Some people can't take all the classes needed to be considered full time, because the college doesn't offer them. Some of the student had to drop classes, withdraw classes, incompletes, some have failed courses in the Fall of 2010, and aren't passing all their courses in the Spring of 2011. He started throwing rules at us that we were not aware of, and the team made the decision not to take a chance. None of them wanted to be the reason for getting the club in trouble, so they made a decision to just drop the event to get the promised refund.

On top of that, he openly and flamboyantly began interrogating the students about their academic transcripts, in FULL view of the dozens of players standing in the check-in line. Ken (manager of the Palm Beach Vipers) was standing 40 feet away and heard EVERYTHING about EVERY player on the USF team, their major, enrollment status, issues, he heard the entire conversation and trust me, Chris Raehl was NOT interested in trying to keep it private.

Chris Raehl had a VERY clear agenda on what he was going to do to that club, and it included embarrassing them, misleading them, and intimidating them. This was the club's first NCPA National Event and he laid into them with everything he had.

He told the club if they dropped the event, they'd get a refund. Then he calls us 3 hours after the team left the field, and tells us that he's keeping their entry money and any attempts to recover it would lead to a lifetime ban of ME from tournament paintball, as if I need his fucking APPA number to play tournaments.

just wow.....

And by the way Chris, last I checked, taking 9 credit hours of 5000 level Graduate Courses is considered FULL TIME when taking graduate courses.

basically the league is designed for full time students only, but anyone who has gone to college knows that things happen that affect enrollment. Money issues, class issues, pre-requisites, etc

They have the ability to grant exceptions, which they do for students all the time.

We got caught like a deer in the headlights, because we didn't know about this other rulebook (the one that looks like the PSP rulebook). So when Chris threatened the club with suspensions, bans and fines based on rules that we didn't know about, it jolted us.

Keep in mind, I don't run this club, I don't have any administrative or officer position in this club. I'm a member of the club, I don't run the club. They have had numerous practices, tournaments and events without me. I assist them in any way possible, but I'm not an officer.

The decisions to move from A to AA, and to withdraw from the tournament were not made by me, they were made by the club's president and vice president based on the conversations they had with Chris at the event.

We missed the rule on the old website? Yes
We missed that rule on the new website? Yes
We missed that rule on the thousands of threads on PBNation? Yes

It says in multiple locations that if you are in your graduating semester, you can play the event. It only says in ONE PLACE, that you need to have been a full time student the semester prior.

Let the club play the event, take it as a learning lesson, everyone moves on and everyone is happy. It's not like we were going there to win the event, we just wanted to participate. We've got 20+ USF Jersey's here with the "NCPA Approved Logo" on them, we had legitimate degree seeking USF students (who were active members in the USF Paintball Club) who turned in the enrollment verification, we rented a hotel room (that no one slept in) to meet the hotel room rule.

Ok, so we can't play Class A and be on the webcast. Is participating in Class AA that much of a big deal, to send the club home?

We didn't go to the NCPA to win it, we just wanted to have the USF Club participate in it. This club invested THOUSANDS of dollars into playing this event. Chris has the ability to make exceptions, he does for other teams all the time. You can't run a league like this without a bit of clemency and understanding. Unfortunately the USF Club didn't get any of this, we got slammed with a rulebook we never read, and went home

Did anyone give him permission to disclose private and personal information infront of many others?

Probably not, which is fucked up. I was talking to mike about this when i met him at cfp that day, he didn't really seem that happy about it. I didn't know all this but either way, in all honesty what can you do?